Techmeme
March 8, 2023, 5:30 AM

Top News

Barbara Ortutay / Associated Press:
Elon Musk apologizes after mocking laid-off Twitter employee Haraldur Thorleifsson, who joined Twitter in 2021 after the company acquired his startup Ueno  —  If you're not told you are fired, are you really fired?  At Twitter, probably.  And then, sometimes, you get your job back — if you want it.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Biden's FCC nominee Gigi Sohn tells the White House she is dropping out after her nomination stalled for 16 months amid industry opposition and personal attacks  —  Gigi Sohn notified the White House she would drop out; her nomination was stalled for 16 months amid industry opposition
Ryan Tracy / Wall Street Journal:
Documents: the FTC demanded Twitter turn over internal messages on Elon Musk, details about layoffs, and the names of journalists with access to company records  —  Documents obtained by a House panel shed light on the probe into Twitter's compliance with settlement
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Twitter lets the certificate for its Tor onion site expire, effectively killing off the privacy-preserving and speech-protecting service after one year  —  Twitter has allowed the certificate for its Tor onion site to expire, effectively killing off a privacy- and speech-protecting service that it introduced last year.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google schedules I/O 2023 with a “limited live audience” for May 10, when Android 14 details, Pixel 7a's debut, and a Pixel Tablet launch date are expected  —  Following the literal input/output puzzle this morning, Google has announced that I/O 2023 is taking place Wednesday, May 10.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources describe how Google stalled the release of a powerful chatbot for years due to the risk AI demos could pose to its reputation and search ads business  —  Researchers developed a powerful chatbot years before rival ChatGPT went viral.  After management stalled its release, they quit.
Brian Fung / CNN:
US senators unveil the bipartisan RESTRICT Act to let the US ban foreign-linked app and hardware makers the Commerce Department deems a national security risk  —  A dozen US senators unveiled bipartisan legislation Tuesday expanding President Joe Biden's legal authority to ban TikTok nationwide …
Ellen Huet / Bloomberg:
How Silicon Valley became obsessed with effective altruism, championed by SBF before he dismissed it as a dodge, and doomsday scenarios like killer rogue AI  —  Sonia Joseph was 14 years old when she first read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a mega-popular piece of fan fiction …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Google and the Technical University of Berlin unveil PaLM-E, a visual language model with 562B parameters, integrating vision and language for robotic control  —  ChatGPT-style AI model adds vision to guide a robot without special training.  —  On Monday, a group of AI researchers from Google …
More: PaLM-ETweets: @dannydriess, @_akhaliq, @dergnz, and @suhail
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Panic launches Catalog, a curated game store for its handheld Playdate console with 16 titles, and raises the device's price by $20 to $199 starting in April  —  As part of a showcase event, Panic announced that Catalog, a game store for its Playdate handheld, would be launching today.
CoinDesk:
A New York bankruptcy judge says Voyager Digital can sell its $1B+ worth of assets to Binance.US, overruling objections by the US SEC and state regulators  —  The bankruptcy judge in the Voyager Digital case chose to allow the deal with Binance.US over objections from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators.
Clare Duffy / CNN:
Meta tests returning messaging features to the Facebook app, nearly a decade after moving them to Messenger, hoping to “differentiate” Facebook from TikTok  —  New York CNN —  —  Nearly a decade after Facebook angered some users by splitting off messaging features …
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Sources: Apple's upcoming 15-inch MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro will feature an 8-core M3 chip, the same core count as the M1 and M2  —  We've been hearing rumors about a new MacBook Air for a while, but some details about it remain unclear. 9to5Mac has now heard …
Bloomberg:
Source: Silvergate is in talks with FDIC officials about ways to avoid a shutdown, including lining up crypto-industry investors to help shore up its liquidity  —  US regulators have been sent to the headquarters of Silvergate Capital Corp., as the troubled crypto-friendly bank looks for a way to stay in business.
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
An oral history of LinkedIn, which turns 20 in May, as told by Reid Hoffman and its co-founders, current executives, Satya Nadella, Richard Branson, and others  —  Social media, for work?  The world was skeptical.  But 20 years and a few white-knuckle moments later, LinkedIn has become synonymous …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
LA-based Believer, a studio founded by ex-Riot executives that plans to build open world games using generative AI, raised a $55M Series A led by Lightspeed  —  Gaming is at a crossroads these days: A decades-old business that has had remarkable staying power banked around classic concepts …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:30 AM ET, March 8, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Andrew Marino / The Verge:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Jordan Novet / CNBC: